Little harsh island, where they eat dead ends
These sea birds are so pretty to look at, what to look out for them attracts thousands of tourists. But for the residents of the Icelandic island puffins are a delicacy and a reminder of how prepared the mother, writes ROS Jones.
To get to the Icelandic island of Grimsey — not great fun, especially for those who are sick of pitching. When you climb aboard the ferry in the port of Dalvik, on the North coast of Iceland, one of the team members shows you immediately where a big pile of special packages.
The sailors do not explain to you what it is, they say, just in case. Instead, severe looking Navy saying directly: “You are going to need. Don’t hesitate, so be it”.
After three hours on the ferry in stormy weather remains in the head only one thought: as soon as possible to reach land.
Grimsey is a tiny island five miles long and two wide. Here there is no tree, they just don’t grow because of the constant strong winds.
The island has a small primary school. Now there are only five students. Grimsey also there is a small shop, a couple of dozen houses, a pool and a lighthouse. I live here 80.
Tourists come here to look at seabirds. Them here many hundreds of thousands. Maybe even a few million. Here and fulmars, and three-toed gulls, and gugarci, and terns, and guillemots. But the stars of the local world of birds — puffins.
They sit on the tops of black rocks, looking down, shaking his disproportionately large orange beaks, and suddenly, all together, dart and dive for fish.
I was lucky to see them. By mid-August, they fly far out to sea for the winter.
A local resident by the name of Ragnhildur, or Gaga, as everybody here calls her, met me at the dock to show the island. According to her, the annual migration of puffins takes place almost suddenly. Wake up in the morning.
Gagga all their marriage conducted on the island of Grimsey. Her husband, like almost all men on the island, the fisherman. It is the fishing is the reason that the island is still inhabited.